The Aftermath
by Saurischian
Summary: Alternate ending. Even after the battle is over, there is still more fighting to be done. There is no Cloud without Tifa.


_It was like watching a newsreel, taking in the event from an outsider's point of view. It was like happening upon a crash and only seeing the end result, the blood and the tears and the chaos, without ever knowing the cause—she could make guesses, put the pieces together, form little clues, create a story, but it wasn't up to her to know the fable to be true. It was like being kicked in the chest—and she'd felt that several times before—and waking up winded and confused, alone, having forgotten the important parts of the fight._

_ It was like running for days—years—only to have the demon catch up with her._

_ Her eyes lost focus, as the oxygen evaporated from her lungs; she landed on her back, only recalling a slight sensation of pressure below her hips, the momentous weight of something on her legs. Plunged into the darkness, all that remained beyond the searing of tissue in the back of her skull was the crashing and screaming—that of someone else or her own she couldn't be sure—and the crackling of consuming explosions not far away. After a second all feeling dissipated, and the sounds died away inside her head. There was no sense of inflation that comes with utter numbness, nor the impression of fragility with a broken body._

_ In the time it took to succumb completely to the emptiness, she went over in her mind the moments it had taken for her to get to this point, the world falling about her—it was the apocalypse, yet she couldn't find the heart to care. Actually, she couldn't find her heart at all; somehow, it had disappeared._

_ She started in Nibelheim. Mount Nibel, at the bridge. She did recognize the momentum of the ground giving way beneath her feet, the cracking of wood and the twisting of nails coming out of their stakes. She had fallen before, if not from a plane but from an old, unreliable bridge. She hadn't noticed she was in trouble until she glanced down and saw the ravine floor coming at her faster than could have ever been safe for an eight-year old. It wasn't much different now—Cloud had tried to be there for her then, and he had tried to be there for her now. And so that was the conclusion she came to as the final shadows of light faded from her field of vision._

_ It comforted her, knowing the past and the future as she did, that Cloud had always tried to be there for her. She would always be able to remember, in the end, that his grip was strong. She could remember that he would tell her, unfaltering, that everything would be okay._

_ And that his eyes, those magnificent steel blue crystals, would scream and scream for the fear._

_ She screamed too, but not because she was afraid._

--

They fell like dead birds from the sky, plummeting to the ground with increasing speed. Much like Meteor, the group of them promised destruction to wherever they landed. Yet unlike Meteor, they actually did land. No Holy or Lifestream could help them, not now.

He awoke where he couldn't hear the burning airship, under a canopy of shattered branches—he had fallen through a patch of small but lush deciduous trees several yards away from the site of the wreckage. He thought he had been holding on to something, so what had he let go for?

His hands flexed themselves into fists, buried in the leaves he had ripped from the trees and the brown, sharp grass beneath him. He could feel a tear in his leg, and the roundness of a bruise slowly beginning to form. His face was wet, and he could only guess why the gash in his forehead didn't hurt as much as the one to his thigh.

Gradually, he sat himself upright, trying to keep from moving his neck excessively. Truth be told, he should have taken it much slower than he did, but something was sitting in his stomach that had not been there before, an essence of panic that shouted and cursed at him—he shouldn't have fallen out of the plane in the first place, so what about the other seven-plus people who had been on board with him? What about the person he had been holding on to before he fell...?

His heart sunk. Tifa. He had thought his grip on her wrist had been strong, and her own just as much, yet before he knew it her gloved hand had been torn from him, she had disappeared, and he had followed her to the ground. He could only assume that the others had made it out alright.

Tifa, however, had fallen much sooner—and much higher—than any of them.

His first attempt at standing had him ended up on the ground, and it would be several more minutes before he was able to abuse his body further and begin walking. While the aggregation of trees was thin, his senses were still clear enough to pinpoint a clearing beyond, to identify the stench of scorching metal farther still, and the faintness of voices calling him. He followed them, finally coming to the crash site. It was more than enough to witness the Highwind in such a pathetic state of disrepair. Chunks of earth and rock had been ripped up, leaving a short but wide trail that had torn apart pretty much everything in its path. Large shards of metal stuck up from the ground, and the nose of the airship was buried deep within the planet; they had landed the plane, if you could call it that, on its side, and piece by piece things had flown off until much of the frame lay exposed on the ground. Parts were still flaming, crackling and jumping as more parts disintegrated and collapsed amidst the wreckage.

Vincent saw him first; the rest of them followed, eagerly, their faces pale and bruised and contorted with worry. He head began to sting, as he came to realize with a sudden jerk of his stomach that everyone was accounted for, save for her. Tifa was nowhere to be seen.

"Good. Almost everyone here, then." Cid had a cigarette, faithfully lit, pressed between his lips. "Doesn't look like you suffered too much damage, kid." Cloud pressed a hand to his forehead, searching for the tender spot near his hairline; it, unlike his leg, hadn't stopped bleeding, in addition to the gradually growing headache towards the front of his skull.

"Where's Tifa?" He couldn't say why he expected them to know. Cid simply shrugged, and the rest of them gazed at him with sympathetic naivete.

"She's probably out in the woods, somewhere. Like you were," Barret suggested. "She'll come back."

Somehow Cloud didn't expect it would be that easy.

They searched for a solid seven hours before they found her, in another, larger wooded area, almost a half mile from the crash site. The sun had a set a while ago, but the city of Midgar was engulfed in a fire large enough to cast an eerie red glow surrounding it, by which they could continue to look, albeit slowly.

So much of the world was on fire.

She didn't answer their calls. What had attracted Red, leading the way, was a portion of airship that had broken off before the main cabin had landed. Trees and brush had been torn apart and set aflame in its descent, and there was enough light to see the small body crushed under a piece of metal grating. It had taken so long to find her that swollen bruises had already formed on her face and on the exposed parts of her arms. Her legs were flattened beneath the grate. It took both Barret and Cloud to lift it.

With every second that passed Cloud's heart shriveled into a smaller and smaller size, rotting away a cavity in his chest like a black hole that was so dense he found his body all the more difficult to move. Tifa's eyes remained closed, and her hair was glued to her scalp from all the blood that had dried. She was so pale, her pulse so hard to find... He cursed the precious time it had taken to find her. Whatever had infected his ribcage was chewing its way into his lungs, making it an unnecessary burden just to get breath in. His muscles suddenly weakened, his knees gave way, and he collapsed next to her, grabbing her face and turning it towards him.

"Tifa!"

Aeris' face flashed in front of his vision. It made him think of Sephiroth. So much had been lost in this fight; Meteor was gone, destroyed by the inexorable force presented by Lifestream and Holy, but what was the fucking _point_, if this was all that was going to happen? A sacrifice had already been made, hearts had already been broken—more times than he cared to count. Why take his last tie to reality away? There had never really been a life without Tifa, not for Cloud. She had always been somewhere, waiting for him, supporting him in her own way, in the only way that mattered; by simply existing she did more than anyone else could do.

He was sucking in air, but becoming lightheaded regardless. There was a shallow beating in her neck, which calmed the tides of nausea washing over him, yet it couldn't bid away the fear stuck in his throat.

"We need to get 'er to a hospital," Barret said from behind.

"We can't move her, she might have a back injury," Red said. "Both her legs are broken."

Cloud didn't ask what they should do. He certainly had no idea. Thoughts were rushing across his mind, which made his head hurt more. Blood had started to drip down his face, but he was too distracted to wipe it. He was terrified. If they moved her, Tifa could die. If they left her here, she would die.

"We don't have a choice," he said firmly. "No one's going to come out here to treat her when so much help is needed in Midgar. Barret's right. We have to get her to a hospital."

They debated how to move her. They wound Cid's jacket around her legs, which dangled lifelessly as Cloud delicately balanced her on his back. Her head wobbled back and forth on his shoulder and he ignored the pain in his leg as he carried her.

Even after everything that had happened, it took them almost an hour to finally reach the city and the erupting melee that awaited them.

There were people everywhere. Burned, bloody, screaming people for yards into the city outskirts. Those who weren't significantly incapacitated were scrambling around like panicked ants, tending to the sick or dying, trying to put out flames, dragging possessions behind them in a desperate search of somewhere safe to retreat. Everyone and everything was in a mad dash for life; it took four tries before someone knew and had time to tell them of an emergency medical camp in one pointed direction. The people at the camp snatched Tifa away at once, palpitating her unresponsive body, looking for signs of consciousness and finding none, shouting words at each other Cloud didn't entirely understand. He watched helplessly as they started an IV and attached a saline drip. Her mangled legs were glanced at, briefly, reset and bandaged properly to staunch the bloodflow, but otherwise left alone.

She would need surgery, eventually, they were told, but it would have to wait until the hospital did rounds again to take back the sickest patients on flatbed trucks. They'd have too see how badly her lower limbs had been crushed. If they did manage to save her life, there still remained the very real possibility that she would lose her beautiful legs.

Cloud's head and thigh were bandaged easily and efficiently. The injuries of the rest of the crew were taken care of. After that, someone with a stethoscope would take Tifa's pulse every few minutes, watch her breathing. Then the person with the stethoscope would move on to the next patient, not speaking, not smiling.

His group dispersed in order to help tame fires and collect the injured for the hospital pick up. Cloud stayed with Tifa. She remained wholly unresponsive as he watched her and the people around them, a lot of whom were crying and talking all at once. He had her hand in his, gripping it fiercely as if he could hold on to her soul the same way, just by holding.

The wait seemed endless. Various vehicles passed, all of which dragged Cloud out of the mental tunnel he succumbed to for a brief moment before the sound would distort and then fade. When the medical truck finally did arrive, it could be seen from far off, trudging its way through the masses at a agonizingly gradual pace that was hard to ignore. It stopped at the camp, and two men and a woman dismounted, instantly dispersing beneath the tents. The people who had helped Tifa immediately came to join them, pointing to her and several other people. When one of the two men came to her, his shirt blood-stained and partly torn, he did not check anything beyond her pulse, at once pulling a strip of plastic from his pocket and tying it around her tiny wrist. He and his companions did this to everyone who was granted a spot on the truck, most of whom were unconscious or covered in black, peeling burns and in too much pain to move.

They prepared for Tifa a stretcher, and Cloud tried to help them get her onto the flatbed which was already half-occupied, but the small team refused him.

"Sorry sir, but you can't get on." Cloud was momentarily stunned; he had never considered leaving her side.

"She doesn't have anyone else," he said. "I'm staying with her."

The two men barricaded the end of the trailer with their bodies, shielding Tifa from his interference. Despite their stern determination, their eyes betrayed an exhaustion with which he could commiserate. "Only the injured, please. We need to get as many injured people on the truck as possible." Of course Cloud understood the validity of their situation, yet his heart was beating so furiously he couldn't stop squirming where he stood.

"How will I find her...?" The man who had given Tifa her plastic tag took out a wide black marker, grabbed Cloud's forearm and began to write.

"This is her number. They'll tell you where to go at the main entrance to the Midgar Hospital."

He stared down at his arm, at once utterly still. Five-thousand seventy-three. Out of gods knew how many others. Just like that, her life had been reduced to a number. A brief apparition of deja-vu washed over him, but it was gone the moment he realized truly what was happening. If she died now, that momentary glimpse of the capacity he had been offered last night would become all he would ever have.

And he wanted more. He was so curious about how much he could hold.

A quick phone call was made. Updates were given, people informed. The group agreed to congregate at the hospital, when whatever task that currently demanded their attention could be waylaid.

Despite his solitary conclusion, Cloud took his time making his way across the refugee camps and into the obliterated city. The previous fury had calmed a bit, and most of the population had been evacuated. Many of the fires had been defeated, although some buildings still emitted thick tarry smoke and angry conflagration. The current business was scouring the wreckage for trapped survivors and for bodies. As he passed, his team's failure became gradually more obvious to him, as he became witness to the carnage that continued to manifest. _This _was what they had 'saved'? They had given _everything _they'd had and _still _so many lives had to be lost? Only his grief surmounted his resentment.

The waiting crowd at the hospital, which had overflowed the building and expanded the campus to twice its original size, was not as large as he might have expected. He was told upon entering the premises that there were people with clipboards at the front, taking the numbers of the patients from the doctors and nurses as they gradually and painstakingly went through the overwhelming bulk of people and ordered them according to immediate urgency. When he was finally able to speak to someone with a clipboard, he was told that Tifa had not been admitted into surgery yet, though her spot in the order of which had already been determined, granted she lived that long.

She seemed to appear the same as when the medical truck had taken her away, but he could tell she was worse. Someone had wiped much of the dry blood caked to her face and around her hairline, though it really didn't make her look any better. A small plastic tube had been inserted into her nose, and the only color on her face was the reflection of the fluorescent hospital lights moved outside, which shone a harsh, pale blue. The image of her made him feel like vomiting, but he couldn't look away. He couldn't stop touching her, grasping her hand immediately and rubbing it between his own, because even through his gloves he could sense how cold she was.

He tried to bring her smile to mind, to keep the picture steady as he remembered her voice telling him that no matter what happened during the fight, she would not have done anything different to try and avoid the inevitable battle. That she was proud to be fighting alongside him and their friends.

_Why? _He hadn't asked when the opportunity arose. He hadn't asked what she saw in him that made her smile at him the way she did, or how she knew without a moment's hesitation that staying and supporting him was worth more to her than leaving and concentrating on her own safety. _Why? Why me?_

His memories wandered to not twenty-four hours before, when they'd sat beneath the Highwind, talking and attempting to sleep while knowing their efforts would be fruitless. Her head on his shoulder, he'd glanced down to find her gazing up at him, her exhausted ruby eyes open and glowing. He still remembered the gentle pliability of her lips, when they'd grazed his as if in query. His response surprised him more than the question had. He hadn't thought, and he hadn't asked why; suddenly the reasons weren't important. She leaned into him, demanding and pleading and acceding to him all at once; that she should be so willing made him nervous and bold. When they lay on the ground in order to rest, she slept with her head still on his shoulder and curled against his side.

Movement flickered between his hands, and he looked over to her eyes, barely open but focused on him, his chest instantly saturated with relief. He squeezed her hand, and swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Hey." The corners of her mouth twitched in a little smile, and she mouthed the word back while emitting no sound. "How are you feeling?" The smile flattened into a concentrated line.

She disentangled her fingers from his, motioning him toward her without speaking. Cloud leaned in, not thinking as he hovered over her mouth to catch that faint whispers he was expecting. In what sounded like a _thank you_, her breath tickled his face; her lips moved against his cheek, pressing faintly to his skin and then pulling away. A significant shiver pulsed over him, raising the hairs on his arms. When he lifted his head to look at her, her eyes had closed.

_No. No, no. Please no._

He realized what had happened before he actually knew. He immediately glanced down to watch as her chest lay still with the breath that never came. The panic was so sudden and complete he couldn't move.

_No, no. Not Tifa. Not Tifa._ As if by simply hoping, she would come back and change the reality which in a moment had become a nightmare.

The intense pain in his eyes startled him momentarily, and slowly he bent until he had his face pressed into the sheet that covered her lower half. Quickly, with efficiency, the tears cascaded down his nose and soaked into the cloth. No matter how tightly he clamped his eyes shut they still came. He remained inert, unable to think anything other than _no_. The truth was inexorable but he protested it, ill with sudden understanding that nothing would ever be right again.

Alone. At once and forever alone. What her presence had given him was now gone, and the knowledge and the proof that had before validated him, in a world that rejected him, would gradually fade until all that was left were rancid, tainted memories which even he would begin to doubt after enough time.

When the rest of the group found him his eyes had turned red and glassy, and he refused to leave the corpse until it had been buried and the dirt above it turned black with rain. They kept their eye on him, apprehensive and fearful of his silence and the lost emptiness in his countenance. They camped that night in the area which in time would become Edge, and when they woke the next morning, Cloud had disappeared.

* * *

**A/N: The intro to this story has been written for years, and I liked it so much, even now, that I wanted to continue it so it could be published, without any real planning towards the 'plot' or storyline. I think I'm as surprised Tifa died as you are. If I wasn't before, I'm now pretty convinced that misery is my business. Although I prefer happy endings, a good tear-jerker is always enjoyable. Hope you thought so too!**


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